Dead or Alive (band)
| Dead or Alive | |
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Dead or Alive, 1985. From left to right: Mike Percy, Steve Coy, Pete Burns, and Tim Lever.
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Nightmares in Wax |
| Origin | Liverpool, England |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1979–2016 |
| Labels | |
| Past members |
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Dead or Alive were an English pop band, formed in 1979 in Liverpool. The band found success in the 1980s and had seven Top 40 UK singles and three Top 30 UK albums. They were the first band to have a number one single under the production team of . Dead or Alive, which at the peak of success featured a lineup consisting of Pete Burns (vocals), Mike Percy (bass), Steve Coy (drums) and Tim Lever (keyboards), have released seven studio albums and five compilation albums, and became popular in Japan.
Two of the band's singles reached the U.S. Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100; "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" No. 11 in 1985, and "Brand New Lover" No. 15 in 1986. "You Spin Me Round" peaked at number one in 1985 in the UK, then charted again in 2003 and 2006 following Burns' appearance on the television reality show Celebrity Big Brother. The latter also became the first of two singles to top the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked them as the 96th most successful dance artist of all-time.
According to Pete Burns in a 2012 interview, the band sold about 17 million albums and 36 million singles.
The band was discontinued with Pete Burns' death in 2016.
In 1977 Burns formed a band with contemporaries Julian Cope, Pete Wylie, and Phil Hurst, calling themselves The Mystery Girls. They played only one gig (opening for Sham 69 at Eric's in Liverpool in November 1977) before disintegrating. Burns returned in early 1979 with a new band, Nightmares in Wax (original name: 'Rainbows Over Nagasaki'), featuring a gothic post-punk sound, with backing from keyboardist Martin Healy, guitarist Mick Reid (ex-Crash Course and Glass Torpedoes), bassist Rob Jones, who left soon afterwards to be replaced by Walter Ogden, and drummer Paul Hornby, formerly of 051 and Pink Military, who also exited soon after the band's formation to be replaced by Phil Hurst. Nightmares in Wax played their first gig supporting Wire at Eric's in July 1979, and, around the same time, recorded demos which included a cover of the Simon Dupree song 'Kites', a feature of their early shows. Although signed to the Eric's Records label, their only release, a three-track 7" EP entitled Birth of a Nation, appeared in March 1980 on Inevitable Records. A 12-inch single featuring two of the tracks from the EP, "Black Leather" and "Shangri-La", was released in 1985. The EP featured "Black Leather", which halfway through turned into K.C. & the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way (I Like It)" (a song later revived by Dead or Alive).
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